LERs: The New Currency of Opportunity for Young People
Young people today face an increasingly complex transition from school to work. Nearly 70 million Americans lack a high school diploma or have some college experience but no degree. As of June 2024, Americans owed about $1.6 trillion in student loans — 42% more than what they owed a decade earlier. While major companies have started to drop degree requirements, many are still hesitant to hire workers without formal degrees.
Employers and education providers can increase equity and access to opportunities for students entering the workforce. But, it will require intentionally designed systems and tools that help young people articulate their competencies to chart unique pathways to success. That’s where skills-based hiring — powered by learning and employment records (LERs) — comes in.
LERs are digital records, commonly referred to as badges or digital wallets, of a person’s skills acquired through education, jobs, credentialing, and through service and life experience. The records are verifiable and secure. Users can control and curate LERs, using them to pursue educational and employment opportunities. Holly Garner, vice president and head of workforce for Junior Achievement USA, described these digital tools as “the new currency of opportunity.” For young people, they represent a way to define their value on their own terms, beyond the traditional markers of degrees and test scores.
Through her role, Garner is deeply involved in evaluating the use of badges as part of Junior Achievement’s broader mission to empower young people for career readiness, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy. She views digital wallets as a tool to document an individual’s constellation of experiences, making their unique skills and competencies visible to employers.
Leveling the playing field through skills-based hiring.
Garner explained that traditional hiring practices — with their focus on degrees and elite institutions — have long excluded many capable candidates, particularly those from underserved backgrounds. Skills-based hiring and LERs, by contrast, level the playing field and allow young people to highlight the specific skills and experiences that make them uniquely qualified.
For example, consider a student in central Ohio using Aspyr’s digital wallet. By the time they graduate, they might have a collection of micro-credentials that detail not only the courses they’ve completed but also the internships, service projects and certifications that set them apart. An employer reviewing their wallet would see far more than a degree — they’d see a candidate ready to contribute from day one.
“The move to skills-based hiring is a move to strengthen diversity. And we know that diversity in the workplace is way more than just racial identity. It's socioeconomic diversity; it's intellectual diversity,” Garner said. “There are so many things that go into creating a diverse workplace and we know that diverse workplaces are valuable and productive. Skills-based hiring helps to find and incorporate those diverse experiences and perspectives.”
Identifying value for employers.
The shift to skills-based hiring isn’t just good for students — it’s good for employers, too. According to Garner, badges or digital wallets give hiring managers the granular data they need to make informed decisions.
Experiential learning is key to this transformation. Junior Achievement pairs its long-standing focus on career readiness with opportunities for students to gain real-world experience through job shadowing, internships and speaker series.
These experiences can then be documented in an LER, allowing students to carry evidence of their readiness into future job searches. A badge indicating a student completed a financial institution site visit, for instance, signals interest as well as initiative and a deeper understanding of that particular field.
LERs in action through SkillsFWD.
SkillsFWD’s funding is empowering teams across the country to create and scale interoperable LER ecosystems that increase access to meaningful economic opportunities. While the teams focus on learners and earners of all ages, in geographic regions across the U.S., several projects specifically focus on youth.
For example: A partnership between the The Indiana Commission for Higher Education, The Indiana Chamber of Commerce, and Western Governors University is scaling the Indiana Achievement Wallet. The wallet helps students and alumni document their achievements and connect with high-quality jobs. Beginning with pilots at institutions including Purdue University and Ivy Tech Community College, the team aims to expand the initiative statewide, increasing access for more learners and employers.
In central Ohio, Aspyr is using its SkillsFWD grant to create digital wallets for high school students. These wallets will allow young people to manage and share their educational and job-related credentials as they enter the workforce, ensuring that their skills are both visible and verifiable to potential employers
A team at Arizona State University is working through SkillsFWD to create LERs that enable students to connect with on-campus employers through an employment marketplace. When fully launched, the platform will allow students to showcase the skills they gain through their on-campus employment so they can leverage those, in addition to those they gain through coursework, as they move through their career.
The promise of LERs for young people is simple but transformative: to equip them with the tools to tell their stories, build their careers and realize their potential. This work requires collaboration between educators, employers, policymakers, and learners and earners to drive broad innovation and adoption. The challenge now is scaling these efforts so that all young people — regardless of where they are from or what they hope to achieve — have the opportunity to thrive.